Nero lay on the steaming rock, like a broken puppet. Every breath was a knife in his ribs. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and warm. He coughed, spraying red across the ground.
Across the shattered battlefield, Subject #009 moved. She was hurt too. A part of her side and wing was just... gone, burned away. Golden fluid, not blood, seeped from the wound. But she was standing. She was still in control.
She walked toward him, slow and careful. She didn't trust him. Not even now. Her golden eyes were locked on his limp form.
As she walked, the air around her began to move, not in big gusts, but in tiny, terrible ways. She was weaving the wind itself into hundreds—no, thousands—of invisible threads. Each one was thinner than a hair and sharper than a razor. She was creating a net of silent death around herself, and she was bringing it with her toward Nero. She would cut him apart from a distance. She would not get close.
